


Fingerbones

by DachOsmin



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Banter, Bondage, Bones as Sex Toys, Dom/sub, F/F, Fingerfucking, Inappropriate Use of Bone Magic, Ritual Sex, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:49:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29424840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DachOsmin/pseuds/DachOsmin
Summary: Aiglamene lifted the parchment again. “To be worthy of her office,” she read, seemingly buoyed by no longer having to look at Gideon, “the cavalier must submit to her necromancer, and feel pleasure at her hand.”Or: Gideon and Harrow have ritual sex, Gideon makes a valiant attempt at convincing Harrow that normal people do not use other peoples' skeletons as sex toys, and Harrow makes a valiant attempt at shutting Gideon up.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 19
Kudos: 101
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Fingerbones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilith/gifts).



Aiglamene cleared her throat. “There’s one last step to becoming a cavalier that I haven’t mentioned.”

Uncharacteristically, Aiglamene paused there, hesitating as she looked at the next line on the parchment she was reading from. Gideon, who had never known Aiglamene to shirk from hearing the sound of her own voice, was immediately wary. “What is it?”

Aiglamene assumed the expression of a corpse that had spent at least a century sucking on lemons. “You’re not going to like it.”

“There are a lot of things about this situation I don’t like, Gideon said, ignoring Harrow’s quiet huff behind her. “Spit it out.”

Aiglamene lifted the parchment again. “To be worthy of her office,” she read, seemingly buoyed by no longer having to look at Gideon, “the cavalier must submit to her necromancer, and feel pleasure at her hand.”

Pleasure. At Harrow’s hand. Gideon’s brain short circuited. Gideon’s mouth, which had no such problem, soldiered bravely on. “Well, easy enough. Harrow, toss yourself out a window, there’s pleasure for me right there.”

A disembodied hand popped out of the packed earth floor and punched Gideon in the shin, hard enough to bruise.

“Oof—not pleasure,” Gideon bit out. “Unless you’re into that? Is Harrow stick-up-her ass into kinky shit? Are you going to spank me?”

It was hard to make out Harrow’s expression beneath the paint of her death-mask, but the strip of bare skin at Harrow’s ear was flushed an angry red. Gideon decided that meant she was winning.

“If you’re too immature to handle the demands of the ceremony,” Harrow minced, “I won't ask it of you.” Her mouth twisted in distaste. “I wouldn’t force a _child_ into this.”

Oh, _fuck_ no. “Oh, you will find I’m very much adult enough. XXX rated, baby.”

Harrow’s lips thinned even further, so much so that they were completely hidden in the white of her death mask. “Excellent,” she said, and strode from the room, leaving Gideon feeling smug in victory, until a second later she realized what she’d just agreed to.

“Good luck,” Aiglamene said, sounding suspiciously cheerful. “You’re going to need it! Now, has anyone given you the talk yet?”

Gideon regretted that she had but two hands with which to flip Aiglamene off, but sometimes the world just wasn’t fair.

***

The ceremony was to take place that night.

There was a ritual bath, replete with an odd smelling soap that made Gideon sneeze. A set of skeletons had appeared to “help” her, both of which turned deaf ears to her repeated protestations that she was fine, really, honestly. Perhaps it was that they had no ears to speak of, or maybe Harrow had sent them, not trusting Gideon to know how to take a damn bath by herself.

Whatever the reason was, one ended up holding her down in the water while the other scrubbed at her skin until it was as angry a red as her hair. They were probably gentler with Harrow, Gideon thought sullenly. If there were any skeletons in Harrow’s bath, they were probably reverently pouring scented lotion over her and massaging fragrance into her hair or something.

Gideon proceeded to lose a good five minutes imagining Harrow in the bath with skeletons. It was one of the weirder fantasies she’d had, but in her defense, it had been a weird kind of day.

Would Harrow be all business about things, or would she allow herself to luxuriate a bit? Would she let the skeletons rub the lotion into her skin, finger bones pressing down gently, reverently? Or would she do it herself as water sluiced over her shoulders and down her chest, rivulets trickling down the slope of her—

She was rudely jerked from her reverie when one of her own skeleton attendants dunked her head underwater and then yanked her out of the tub.

“Fuck you too,” she muttered, and stomped off to get dressed.

***

Half an hour later found Gideon freezing her ass off in a thin linen shift in the corridor outside of Harrow’s bedroom.

The bathing skeletons had escorted her there, either as some type of ritualistic honor guard or to keep her from thinking better of the whole thing and running the fuck away. She’d seriously considered the latter at least three times on the walk over, but she didn’t have her sword and she had no doubt Harrow had authorized these particular fuckers to use all force short of lethal to deliver Gideon to their mistress’s bed. And what a thought that was.

As Gideon shivered in place, one of the skeletons pointed at the door.

“Yeah, I got it,” Gideon murmured, making no move to enter. What if this whole thing was a practical joke? What if she went in and Harrow took one look at her in her ridiculous shift and laughed her ass off?

The other skeleton also pointed at the door with a wavering fingerbone. Really, they could have a bit of compassion. It wasn’t like they were being asked to fuck anyone, much less Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Did skeletons even fuck? What would the mechanics of that even be?

The first skeleton jabbed its finger at the door once again.

“Yes, that’s the door,” Gideon muttered. “I have eyes, you know.”

“You could have fooled me,” Harrow snapped, wrenching the door open and glaring out into the hallway. “Will you come in, already? I have work to do after this.”

Gideon opened her mouth to ask about this work, and why exactly Harrow felt it was more important than fucking her cavalier in an archaic sex ritual—but then decided that she really didn’t care, because Harrow was standing in front of her in the flimsiest of robes, bare-faced and hair still wet from the bath.

The skeletons hadn’t put paint on Gideon, but somehow she hadn’t considered this would mean Harrow wasn’t going to be wearing paint either. She was dressed in the same unadorned shift that Gideon herself wore, but without paint she looked naked. Vulnerable. Soft.

“Hurry the fuck up, Griddle.”

Okay, not so soft. Gideon schlepped over the threshold with ill grace, trying to ignore the sinking feeling that she was going to her death.

While Harrow shut the door behind her, Gideon took the opportunity to examine, and also judge, Harrow’s bedroom.

The lights were dimmed—mood lighting, Gideon’s brain helpfully suggested. Except it was probably like this all the time because Harrow would totally risk eye strain reading in the dark for the aesthetic.

The furniture was all ancient looking, stained black and carved with gruesome patterns of dancing skeletons. There was a desk hunched against one wall, and an armoire malingering in the opposite corner, no doubt filled to the brim with identical black robes.

And against the far wall, the bed. The bed Harrow was going to fuck her on. Wow, yeah, still stuck on that. The bed, right, focus on the bed. It was massive, with four posts of the same carved wood and a canopy of decaying black lace. The sheets were tucked in place and utterly unwrinkled, because god forbid Harrow remove the stick from her ass even in private.

Gideon leaned against the far wall of the room, and fought the urge to pick at the hem of her sleeve. What did people usually say before engaging in ritual sex? The scenario wasn’t uncommon in certain subgenres of magazines that Gideon had had the opportunity to peruse, but somehow Gideon figured “Fuck me for the honor of the King Undying” was going to get her smacked, and not in the fun way.

Huh. Did Harrow like smacking in the fun way? Did _she_ like the idea of Harrow liking smacking in a fun way?

Gideon was glad Harrow picked that minute to finish whatever she’d been doing with the door lock, because smacking was not something she needed to think about right at that moment.

Harrow seemed less glad than she was. Harrow seemed monumentally pissed off about something, is what Harrow seemed.

Well, whatever it was, it wasn’t her problem. “Should I lie down?” she asked. “I think people usually lie down.”

Harrow’s mouth twisted in a sneer. “This is not some—some romantic tryst, this is a ceremony.”

Gideon couldn’t help the laughter that burbled up. “Obviously it’s not a ‘romantic tryst,’ who the fuck would want to tryst romantically with you?”

“Take your fucking clothes off,” Harrow hissed, eyes flashing in the dim light.

“Case in point.”

There was a snarl, and Harrow was gesturing at the wall while muttering under her breath. Suddenly there were cold fingerbones wrapping around Gideon’s biceps, pinning her to the wall. The texture made her shiver as they slid over her skin, smooth like silk, cold as the grave.

“Can you stay still?” Harrow asked. “Or do I need to restrain you?”

“Um, yeah okay,” Gideon said. Her cheeks suddenly felt quite warm.

Harrow frowned. “’Okay’ as in you’ll stay quiet? Or ‘okay’ as in I need to restrain you?”

“For fuck’s sake—"

Suddenly there were more bones springing out of the walls: bones encircling her wrists, bones twining around her biceps. And then finally, the hiss and clack of bone encircling her neck. Not enough to choke, no, but a warning in potential. She swallowed, the motion pressed her skin against the vise of the skeletal fingers, belaying their iron strength.

She pulled slightly at the bindings on her wrists, just to feel if there was any give in the restraints. There was none. Her stomach flipped over just a bit, at the feel of it—of being held so absolutely, of being helpless and at the mercy of Harrow.

“Asking again,” Harrow said, and Gideon had to be imagining the slight tremor in her voice. “Can you stay still?”

“Yeah,” Gideon managed to say. “Not going anywhere. Just going to stay right here. With the bones.”

There were maybe some other things she wanted to say about the whole affair, but whatever words she’d been planning on using promptly fled when yet another bony hand slithered over her shoulder and began undoing the buttons of her shift.

That was—oh. Gideon bit back an embarrassingly high-pitched sound as one of the fingerbones grazed the skin of her chest. She’d had fantasies of course, what Ninth House whelp didn’t? But this was very much the stuff of the weirder titty mags. She hadn’t expected Harrow to go for it. Not that she was going to complain. As if; this was honestly the hottest thing she’d experienced in her life.

She held still as the skeletal hands worked, undoing button after button as the heat in her cheeks and the desire in her belly grew. Everything felt hot; she was hyperaware of every motion of the bones, and beyond them the heavy weight of Harrow’s eyes on her body as she manipulated her puppets.

The last button slipped from its hole and Gideon’s shift fell wholesale from her shoulders to puddle on the floor.

The hands hung suspended in the air for a moment, as if unsure what to do. And then as Gideon watched, Harrow bit her lip, and the hands floated up to rest at Gideon’s shoulders. The fingers reached out. And then they were touching her.

Gideon gasped as one set of fingerbones traced a lazy path over the swell of her biceps, their touch light enough that they just barely grazed the hair, giving her goosebumps. One bony finger dragged over her collarbone before dipping lower, lower.

Gideon inhaled sharply as the bone fingertip slipped closer and closer to the peak of her breast. She felt pinned between the attentions of the bones and the heavy weight of Harrow’s gaze from the other side of the bedroom.

“What—”

Quick as a wink, the bone fingers tweaked at her nipple, rolling the nub back and forth, pinching at it, worrying at it. Gideon bit back a curse. It was nothing she hadn’t done to herself before but suddenly it felt _more_ now, each touch going straight to the heat kindling in her belly.

“Fuck,” she whispered, eyes fluttering shut.

Another disembodied hand materialized at the edge of her ribcage, grazing the sensitive skin there. As Gideon held her breath it twined lower, tracing the furrows of her abs, the soft skin of her stomach, and then whispering over the swell of her pubic bone.

She was hyperaware of its progress, so she noticed when it paused there. Hesitated.

Gideon opened her eyes. Looked at Harrow, standing stock still watching her, lips parted slightly.

Interesting.

Letting out a ragged breath, Gideon made a valiant effort at rational thought. On the one hand she wanted nothing more than for the bones to go to town, fuck her hard and fast until she was screaming. But on the other hand no, what the fuck, she was absolutely not having sex for the first time with a bunch of Harrow’s pet disembodied skeletons that came from god knows where, especially not when Harrow was _right there._

“Mngh,” she said, trying to remember how to articulate things like a normal person.

The fingerbones paused, floating whisper-light over the skin of her hips.

She tried again. “Harrow.”

“What?” Harrow said. Her voice sounded suspiciously hoarse.

Gideon shifted in the bone restraints. “So about this fucking me with bones thing. See, I get that it lets you be an emotionally removed ice queen and all—”

The fingerbones around her neck tightened in warning.

“—But!” Gideon wheezed, “Aiglamene did say that I had to feel pleasure at your hands. Not at anyone else’s hands.” _Like, say, the previous owners of all these bones you’re so fond of_ , Gideon didn’t add. She felt that part was fairly clear from context.

“’At your hand’ is a figure of speech,” Harrow said, but she didn’t sound quite so sure of herself. “It’s metonymy.”

Gideon, having no idea what a metonymy was, shrugged as much as the restraints allowed her to. “Maybe it is? But I’d want to be sure. For the sake of the ceremony.”

Harrow stared at her. Her eyes seemed blacker than they normally were, blown wide in the dark. “For the ceremony,” she said. It almost sounded like a question.

“Yeah. Since I know you don’t want to have to do this again.”

Harrow swallowed; Gideon watched as the motion disappeared beneath the collar of her shift. “Okay,” she whispered, as if she was resolving an argument she’d been having with herself. “Fine.”

And then before Gideon could say anything stupid in response, she was closing the distance between them, quickly, as if she were afraid that her courage might fail her.

And then they were kissing, and Aiglamene hadn’t said anything about this, but fuck Aiglamene. Harrow tasted like the bitter wine they’d served at dinner; Harrow tasted hungry; Harrow tasted _alive._

As Gideon kissed her, Harrow brought her hands up to tangle in Gideon’s hair, yanking at the ends as she bit at Gideon’s lips. Pinpricks of pain bloomed bright in Gideon’s scalp and lips, and each one sent a jolt of arousal through her body.

One of Harrow’s hands released her hair and Gideon whined at the loss of it, but then there were fingers skimming over her ribs and the plane of her stomach— _real_ fingers this time, the skin hot against her own.

The fingers paused just where the bones had, right above her pubic bone, and Gideon almost cried in frustration. “Are you going to fuck me?” she panted. “Or are you too chicken?”

“Fuck you,” Harrow spat, and then they were kissing again, and Harrow was sliding her fingers down.

That first touch of Harrow’s finger against her clit— _fuck._ Gideon cried out, and would have collapsed if she hadn’t been held up by a bevy of dead people’s bones.

She hadn’t realized how wet she was, how needy. Some part of her quailed at the thought—dammit, Harrow was going to think this was because of her; she was going to be insufferable—but the rest of Gideon did not give a damn because Harrow was slipping a finger between the folds of her, stroking at her so that every downstroke hit her clit, lit up her nerves like a pyrotechnic display.

Two of Harrow’s other fingers sank between her folds without warning; it was all she could do to clench hard around them, biting back curses as Harrow crooked her fingers and began to pump them back and forth.

Distantly, she could hear the noises she was making: little breathy moans and whimpers, the sort of thing that she’d find very embarrassing after the fact.

But in the moment there was only Harrow, touching her, tasting her, taking apart. As Harrow’s fingers fucked her, Harrow’s lips mouthed wordless entreaties into the sensitive skin of her neck, and Harrow’s other hand tangled in the hair at the nape of her neck, working with the skeletons to hold her in place, ripe for plunder.

The fingers sped up, and Gideon cried out, helpless and desperate and utterly overwhelmed. She felt like a weapon, and Harrow her wielder. She felt like a target, and Harrow a sword.

All of a sudden Harrow withdrew her fingers. But before Gideon could register their absence, Harrow was kissing her on the lips again, and her fingers were pressing down on her clit and rubbing, hard. 

One, two, three swirls and she was done for. She came with a shout that Harrow swallowed utterly, trembling and bucking against the bone restraints at her neck and wrists as waves of pleasure took her, and everything went white.

***

It took Gideon a moment or two, to come back to herself.

“Okay,” she gasped as the restraints released her. She tried to remember how to stand up on her own; her legs felt jellied. “That was—wow. Okay.”

“Just okay?” Harrow prodded; Gideon couldn’t tell whether she was offended or pleased. Perhaps she didn’t know herself.

Well, Gideon was hardly going to admit that it had been fan-fucking-fantastic, that any metaphorical socks she’d been wearing had been well and truly blown blown off, or that this had been the absolute highlight of her life so far. It would go to Harrow’s head, and no one wanted that. “Yeah, it was fine,” she said, stretching her arms above her head.

“Fine,” Harrow repeated faintly.

“Mmm hmm. Definitely felt pleasure at your hand. Ceremony is all good.” Gideon turned a speculative eye to Harrow, took in the blush infusing her cheeks, the darkness of her eyes, the raggedness of her breathing.

“Your turn.”

Harrow’s eyes widened a fraction. “That’s—it’s not part of the ceremony. It’s not necessary.”

Gideon considered this for a moment. “The fuck it’s not,” she finally said, and before Harrow could react she was pile driving her into the bed and burying her head in Harrow’s lap.

There were no fingerbones involved this time. Gideon used her tongue instead. But luckily, Harrow didn’t seem to mind at all.


End file.
